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How Second-Wave Feminism Failed, and Why It Doesn't Matter

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How Second-Wave Feminism Failed, and Why It Doesn't Matter City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Capstones Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism 12-31-2014 The Bitter Pill: How Second-Wave Feminism Failed, and Why It Doesn't Matter Brianna McGurran How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gj_etds/10 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] The Bitter Pill: How Second-Wave Feminism Failed, and Why It Doesn’t Matter By Brianna McGurran I met Jonathan on Tinder. Newly single after realizing I didn’t love the sweet, stable guy I thought I’d marry, I downloaded the creepy dating app to inundate myself with proof I made the right decision. Jonathan’s pictures were cute; he was tall and played guitar. “Aspiring musician in Williamsburg waiting tables. You know, just livin’ the dream!” his bio read. He seemed warm and creative, and he promised the spontaneity and originality my ex lacked. I swiped right on his photo to show I liked him, and it was a match: he liked me, too. I got a lot of matches, but this one gave me a flutter in my chest. He texted me an hour later. We talked about music, and he didn’t seem like a serial killer. I was surprised that our interactions were so polite and normal: I assumed all men on Tinder were sex addicts with poor grammar. I reminded myself that I was on Tinder, too, and that I shouldn’t judge too harshly. He asked me where I was from and sent me a video of him singing in his sunny loft. When he asked me out for coffee the following Sunday afternoon, I said yes. He had to work that night at a restaurant in Union Square so he suggested we meet nearby. “Sure, no worries,” I said, even though it would be a long trip from my place in Brooklyn. I was glad we’d meet in public, at the Grey Dog coffee shop. He was a stranger, after all. That Sunday at noon I opened my closet door and thought about how utterly second-wave feminism had failed. I stared at the chaotic mass of tank tops, jeggings, off-the-shoulder sweaters and wrap dresses strewn on my drooping Ikea shelves. I pored through my stack of jeans in every color and fit and grabbed the ones with the high waistband. I liked them because they covered the roll of skin at my belly that wouldn’t go away no matter how much yoga I did. I pulled out my go-to date top, a V-neck white shirt with buttons down the front. I put on my favorite brown knee-high boots and turned toward my full-length mirror. My outfit needed to seduce and pacify, to assure Jonathan that I cared how I looked but wouldn’t be high-maintenance. As I stepped into the bathroom I took stock of how much concealer I’d need to pretend my skin was flawless and dewy. I plugged in my flat iron to let it heat up while I rubbed on foundation. My make-up bag on the bathroom shelf overflowed with half-used eyeshadow and lip gloss in shades like Sapphire Siren, Pink Wink and Glow For It. I dug through it to find my favorite mascara and pumped the wand a few times to eke out the last of the $12 goop from the tube. I grabbed my flat iron, pressed three-inch chunks of unruly blonde hair between the ceramic plates and pulled. I didn’t know what Jonathan’s favorite movie was or where he’d gone to college, but I wanted him to think my hair looked shiny. My beauty regimen made me realize that nothing has been resolved in the decades since the New York Radical Women threw their bras and high heels into a trash can outside the 1968 Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. We’re told Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem liberated us, but American women still spend $7 billion a year on cosmetics. Women had more than 10 million surgical and nonsurgical cosmetic procedures in 2013, an increase of almost 500 percent since 1997. And in the past few years, it’s suddenly not cool to be a feminist. It’s not anti-establishment to say you don’t identify with that label; it’s the status quo. Two years ago, Billboard named Katy Perry Woman of the Year at its annual Women in Music luncheon. Hair tied back, dressed in a pink sheath with crepe flowers along the neckline, Perry thanked her mom, her sister and her cousin, “who just had a baby with no epidural.” She told the audience that the title “Woman of the Year” didn’t make her an activist. “I am not a feminist, but I do believe in the strength of women.” In November international human rights organization Equality Now honored Salma Hayek for her work with Chime for Change, a nonprofit she co-founded to promote women’s rights in developing countries. Hayek made it clear that her work with the organization – whose motto is “Education. Health. Justice. For every girl. Every woman. Everywhere” – didn’t mean she was a feminist. She also has her own cosmetics line, Nuance Salma Hayek. “I’m not a feminist,” Hayek told People magazine on the red carpet that night. “If men were going through the things women are going through today, I would be fighting for them with just as much passion. I believe in equality.” Every time a Perry or a Hayek distances herself from feminism, blogs like Jezebel and Feministing pounce. Jezebel recently published a post called “The Many Misguided Reasons Famous Ladies Say 'I'm Not a Feminist.’” I don’t know where I fall – I’ve called myself a feminist since I was in college at NYU, yet I know guys like when I wear makeup and act demure on dates. And a few months ago I found out that all the back-and-forth doesn’t matter. The final verdict won’t be found in words spoken on the red carpet or in rejoinders on women’s blogs. The future of gender relations will be decided in an obscure corner of the Internet populated primarily by angry white men. * * * Feminists in the 1970’s are the ones who most people think of when they use the term “feminist.” They wanted women to regain the power that girdles, false eyelashes and society’s impossible standards of beauty took away from them. They saw makeup and body-shaping lingerie as instruments of the patriarchy. One vocal faction believed pornography tyrannized women because it perpetuated images of men in control. “Pornography is the theory, rape is the practice,” said Robin Morgan, one of the organizers of the Miss America protest in 1968. Activists in the second wave knew that women viewed themselves through men’s eyes. They wanted women to recognize the extent of men’s power over them, and ideally to eschew men’s expectations for what to wear and how to act. “One conforms in body type and behavior and values to become an object of male sexual desire, which requires an abandonment of a wide- ranging capacity for choice,” radical feminist Andrea Dworkin wrote in her book Intercourse. Dworkin became infamous for her belief that sex itself, the ultimate expression of male-female relations, could subjugate women. “Violation is a synonym for intercourse,” she wrote. But all that has changed. There’s a growing movement of women who say they’re not ashamed to dress nice for their boyfriends or to take on domestic duties at home. Since Dworkin and Morgan showed women an alternative to the way they’d been living, a new alternative has emerged. Now it’s hard to ignore the women who say that feminism hasn’t worked and that, in fact, it’s bad for men and women alike. Wholesale refutation of feminism has let women unapologetically return to behavior that values men’s opinion of them over everything else. There are radical anti-feminists and there are moderate anti-feminists, but they all add up to a new normal. I won’t leave the house without makeup on and I act agreeable so men will like me. I’m afraid that makes me one of them. The website WomenAgainstFeminism.com appeared last summer. The homepage is broken into squares, like the opening credits of “The Brady Bunch.” It shows pictures of women, most of them younger than 25, who hold handmade signs that declare why they don’t need feminism. “The difference between the sexes should be enhanced, not erased,” one reads. “This isn’t 1920! We’re not fighting for anything anymore. Women have freedom!” says another. Search the hashtag “#WomenAgainstFeminism” on Twitter and you’ll find thousands of tweets like this one from female user @luv_lluvs: “Never agreed with modern feminism since I was younger and to know I’m not the only one who feels this makes me happy.” There is a huge, growing atmosphere of female anti-feminism beyond Twitter. Karen Straughan is one of the most popular anti-feminists and men’s rights activists. She has 75,000 followers on YouTube. She lives in rural Canada with her three kids, and when she’s not posting videos online, she works as a waitress. “I never saw feminism as something that was valid,” she told me.
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